Posts Tagged ‘Being John Malkovich’

It’s hard to say what Being John Malkovich is really about. I guess that’s often the case with well written films and this is certainly one of them. It’s about being married but in love with another who doesn’t love you back. It’s about what it means to be a puppateer, an actor or, for that matter, a writer. It’s about what it would mean to occupy another’s skin emotionally and even plays at what the metaphysical implications of such phenomena might be. Yet Kaufman (writer) is able to navigate all of these subjects daftly through one of the strangest plots ever to achieve success in Hollywood.

With Being John Malkovich, Kaufman wrote one of the most structurally inventive screen-plays of our time, yet, rather than feeling enigmatic or foreign to viewers, it’s fun. The story is hard to summarize, as you might imagine, but I’ll try here for the sake of whoever still hasn’t seen it. (more…)